PoE on a Jack

Power over Ethernet is a fact about one jack, not about a whole box. Each jack answers one question, and the drawing, the validation report and the wiring assistant all read that same answer.

Connection Metadata editor for a ceiling microphone, showing three jack rows. The AVB/Ctrl row has its POE control set to PD and its tier select on PoE+, the sentence beside them reads draws PoE+ from the far-end device, and the pill at the end of the row reads On the drawing AVB/Ctrl (PoE+ in).

One row per jack. The POE control sits on the row's second line, beside the tier select and a sentence that says which way the power runs.

One question per jack

The question is: does this jack send power, receive it, or neither.

Edit a product and click Configure Connection Metadata. Every jack is one row, under the header TYPE · LABEL ON BLOCK · NOTES. + Add jack adds a row. A list with nothing in it reads No jacks yet. Add one below.

Power can only ride an Ethernet cable, so the POE control appears on RJ45 and etherCON jacks and on no others. It is three segments — None, PSE, PD — with a tier select beside them.

A tier is how much power the standard carries. There are three: PoE, PoE+ and PoE++, weakest first.

Whichever segment you pick, the row writes a sentence next to the control, so you can read the jack back without decoding the abbreviations:

PSE — supplies {tier} to the far-end device. A switch port set to PoE+ reads supplies PoE+ to the far-end device.
PD — draws {tier} from the far-end device.
None — no power on this run. That is a stated fact, not a blank.

A jack nobody has described yet shows a muted Not set where the tier would be. Unstated is a legitimate answer — it means the source never said — and it is a different claim from None. You cannot pick unstated back once you have answered: a control that could un-state a fact would let a mis-click look like a considered answer.

Change a jack to a connector that cannot carry power and any PoE setting on it is cleared. A note appears above the row's controls: Power setting cleared — this connector can't carry PoE.

A jack that is not a network connector gets a different second line. In place of POE it offers SIGNAL: an input row reads SIGNAL [In only | Both ways], and an output row reads Out only where the input row reads In only. Network jacks carry signal both ways by definition, so they get the POE line and no SIGNAL line.

PSE and PD

PSE and PD are the two ends of one powered run. PSE — this jack sends power to the far end. PD — this jack is powered by the far end.

A run normally has one of each. The switch port or the injector is the PSE. The camera, touch panel or ceiling microphone it feeds is the PD. One jack is never both: picking a segment clears the other half.

Marking a jack PD is also what fills in the device's Power. That value is read off the jack rather than typed. The editor replaces the Power select with plain text — PoE+ · from AVB/Ctrl — naming the row the value came from. When more than one jack draws, the strongest tier wins.

Under the port lists, a footer states the device's power as a sentence:

Powered by {jack} — draws {tier} — the normal case. For a ceiling microphone fed on its AVB jack: Powered by AVB/Ctrl — draws PoE+.
Draws {tier} — no jack says which one is fed — the box claims a tier, but no jack is marked PD. Mark the jack that takes the power.
Powered by {AC|DC|Power} — the device is not fed over Ethernet at all.
No sentence — nobody has described this device's power yet. An empty footer is the honest rendering; a placeholder there would read as a fact.

A product saved before this release can still carry a device-level tier with no PD jack behind it. The Power select keeps that stored value as its current option, labelled {tier} (legacy) — PoE+ (legacy) for a stored PoE+ — until a jack is marked PD or the value is changed.

What the drawing shows

Nothing composed is ever saved. The jack keeps the chassis name you typed — Mic In 1 stays Mic In 1 — and the block composes the drawn label each time it renders. The row's pill previews it: On the drawing, followed by the exact text the block will carry.

A PSE jack shows ({tier}) after the label: Mic In 1 (PoE+).
A PD jack shows ({tier} in) after the label: AVB/Ctrl (PoE+ in).

That trailing in is the whole difference an engineer reads off the sheet: which end of the run feeds the other.

None and unstated both print nothing. A drawing never asserts a PoE fact nobody stated.

Port labels live in about an inch of block width, so the label steps down when it will not fit: the PoE annotation drops first, then the base name wraps to a second line. The base name never drops — a floating (PoE+ in) with no jack name attached is worse than no annotation at all.

What the validator checks

Only a jack marked PD is audited. That jack states it takes power from the far end, so it is the only one with something to check. A PSE jack is never audited. The jack at the other end of that wire raises the check if it is marked PD, so a PoE switch does not report a line for every port it feeds.

For each PD jack, the report looks at the jack on the far end of the wire:

The far jack	Result
Supplies that tier or a higher one	Pass — nothing is reported.
Supplies a lower tier	Error — the sentence names the shortfall.
Says it supplies no PoE (set to `None`)	Error.
Is marked `PD` too	Error — nothing on that run supplies power.
Does not state a supply	Warning — the wire is kept and the report asks you to confirm it.

The warning row is the one worth knowing. Unstated is not the claim "this jack supplies nothing", so the wire is real and it is stored; the report only asks for the confirmation nobody has given.

One more notice, raised once per device rather than once per wire: when a device's Power says a tier and no jack is marked PD, the report reads {DeviceLabel} draws {T}, but no jack says which one is fed — mark that jack PD.

When the AI assistant hits a PoE error while wiring, it reports the same sentence and adds the remedy: Land it on a jack that supplies at least that tier, or flag it.

See Flags & Jump Tags for what a flagged jack looks like on the sheet.

Products already in the catalog

Nothing changes on a product until you open it. Its jacks keep whatever they hold.

Run the sweep first. On the Products page, click Backfill Port Facts. It reads the port names and notes you already have and offers, jack by jack, to write them into the typed fields. Every row starts on leave-alone; nothing is written until you say which. This is the first thing to run after this release.

Two of its offers matter here:

Move designation '{name}' into notes — moves a retired designation's name into the jack's Notes, and only where those notes are still empty. Notes you have already written are left as they are.
Mark {label} as PD {tier} — where a device states it needs a PoE tier and exactly one of its jacks is left unstated and PoE-capable, that jack can be marked as the one taking the power.

Sweep before you edit

A product saved from the metadata editor before the sweep runs loses its designation word. The sweep is the only thing that can still move it into the notes.

AI auto-fill never overwrites a value you set. Auto-fill with AI in the port editor, Apply Metadata on the Products page, the assistant's autofill on the canvas, room enrichment on a project, and the MCP tools all fill blanks only. A jack's PoE setting or a port name you entered by hand survives every one of them. AI can add what you left unstated; it cannot replace what you stated.

Three deliberate ways to change a value you curated:

Edit it in the port editor.
On the schematics rooms tree, right-click a product and choose Build Metadata with AI. If that product carries hand-entered port values you are asked first, and you pick Keep Values or Overwrite All. This is the only AI action anywhere in the app that offers the overwrite.
Import Metadata on the Products page with Overwrite existing metadata switched on — you exported the file, edited it, and asked for it back.

When the port list changes shape

Carrying a curated value forward needs the old jack and the new jack to be recognisably the same one. When a regeneration returns a port list that no longer lines up — different count, renamed jacks, two identical ones — AVstackr drops the value rather than guess where it belonged. You find the field empty, which you can see and retype; you do not find it quietly attached to the wrong jack.

Impossible values are dropped on save

A PoE setting on a connector that cannot carry power is stripped before it reaches the database, whichever route it arrived by — file imports and API writes included. A jack that arrives claiming both a supply and a draw keeps the draw and loses the supply. If a value you expected is missing after a bulk import, that is where it went.

The same two facts over the API

Integrations write the same pair. Every port carries poeSource (a tier, or "none" for a jack confirmed to supply nothing) and poeDraw (a tier), never both, and the device's power is derived from the PD jack when it has one. See the Products API and the MCP Server.